Candidates for the Vacaville Unified School District Governing Board participate in a forum sponsored by the Vacaville Teachers Association on Tuesday at Will C. Wood High School.
Joel Rosenbaum -- The Reporter

Just who the Vacaville Teachers Association endorses for the pending school district governing board election may depend not so much on which candidate has or does not have a fervent passion for students and teachers — or a sharp eye on budget numbers — but more on where they stand on independent charter schools.

In what became the most revealing exchange during a Tuesday candidate forum, the first of the fall election season, the dual questions to the nine candidates seeking four trustee seats up for grabs was who supports independent charter school growth and how would they vote on a new independent charter, such as the newly opened Kairos Public School Vacaville Academy.

A charter school is a public school which receives public funding but operates as either a "dependent" or "independent" charter. Dependent charter schools receive state funding through a school district and are subject to its oversight. A charter school also may operate as an "independent" charter, which receives its funding primarily and directly from the state but is governed by its own nonelected board while typically paying nominal oversight fees to an existing school district.

Since the charter school movement began in the early 1990s in the United States, they have sometimes faced opposition from school boards, state education agencies and teachers unions, with many public-school advocates asserting that charters drain resources from traditional schools and sometimes tend to enroll students from prosperous socio-economic backgrounds that do not represent the rapidly changing demographic trends in America, namely a majority of minority students.

As they spoke, that background weighed on the minds of the candidates and some 75 members of public at the two-hour question-and-answer-style forum in the Catwalk Theatre at Will C. Wood High. The forum was sponsored by the VTA, a union which represents more than 600 full- and part-time teachers and other certificated personnel in the district.

Incumbent Michele Dally, a longtime educator and former principal at Markham Elementary, noted that she voted to approve the Kairos petition last year but that she "struggled" with her vote. Still, she welcomed the formation of Kairos, a TK-8 school housed at the old Elm Elementary campus, she said.

Also an incumbent, Chris Flask, a strategic planner at Genentech with a history of volunteer committee service to the district, noted that he, too, voted for the Kairos petition and raised his voice slightly when he said that it was "not a private school," as some might mistakenly believe. Candidate Jeremy Jeffreys, a teacher at Green Valley Middle School in Fairfield, asserted that Kairos was, essentially, "a private school" funded by taxpayer dollars, adding that other districts have dealt with parental choice by urging the formation of specialized curriculum schools, such as the Fairfield-Suisun Public Safety Academy.

Incumbent David McCallum, an account executive at KUIC-FM 95.3 in Vacaville, voted to approve the Kairos petition, but, he noted, the school compensates VUSD for some services, such as landscaping.

Candidate Deloris Roach, a small-business owner and former East Bay school district trustee with an extensive record of public- and private-sector experience, noted that the district's attorney opposed approval of Kairos "and I would have opposed it."

Judith Ruggiero, an another candidate and a governing and U.S. history teacher at Vanden High in Fairfield, said, "I would have voted no."

Candidate Tracee Stacy, publisher of Prime Time Living magazine and a member of Vacaville Public Education Foundation board of directors, with a long history of service on district committees, said she would have preferred if Kairos were a dependent charter, like Buckingham High.

Incumbent Whit Whitman simply said, "I voted no," but added that the board approved Kairos and he would abide by the decision.

Shawn Windham, a Vacaville police officer, said he would not have supported the Kairos vote had he been a member of the board last year, saying charters tend to be financial drains on school districts.

The next VUSD candidate forum is set for 6 p.m. Sept. 17 at Pietro's No. 2 restaurant in Vacaville. It is sponsored by the Vaca Valley Tea Party.